We are pleased to present here a collection of 36 rare and unpublished disc recordings made almost a century ago under the supervision of Thomas A. Edison, the inventor of the phonograph. The sound archive at the Edison National Historic Site houses a collection of several hundred original test pressings of Edison disc recordings that for one reason or another were never released to the public. From this collection, we have chosen recordings based on the merit of the singing and the reputations of the various singers. Some are well known names such as Lucrezia Bori, Emmy Destinn, Frieda Hempel, and Emmi Leisner, while others were not so prominent but had substantial careers. In several cases, these Edison recordings are the only examples of their voices. We hope that the biographical sketches of the singers included here will provide informative reading as you listen.

Aside from the musical content of the recordings, what makes them so enjoyable is the sheer superiority of sound that Edison was able to achieve given the limitations of the acoustical recording process. Many of these discs were recorded between 1910 and 1913 when Edison was beginning to experiment with disc-recording. He made certain that every aspect of his recording technique was kept absolutely secret with no paper trail. Only Walter Miller, the head of the recording division, understood the entire process. Even today, no one really knows how Edison achieved a sonic clarity which was in many ways superior to the recordings of his competitors. His process was capable, for example, of reproducing sibilant sounds such as “s” and “ch”, which are almost always lacking on acoustic recordings. Edison was not as successful in capturing lower frequencies, thus his recordings tend to lack the depth sometimes heard on Gramophone Company recordings from the same period.

The Edison Company made disc recordings for nearly three years before any were published. In fact, out of the first 1000 disc recordings made by Edison, fewer than 25 were ever sold to the public. Why were so many records rejected? There are several reasons for this but they all center upon Edison’s personal involvement with the disc-recording project. Here it might be helpful to mention a few facts concerning Edison and his favorite invention, the phonograph.

In 1877, Thomas Edison was working under contract to the Western Union Company attempting to develop an alternative to Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone that would circumvent Bell’s patents. The phonograph was actually an inadvertent byproduct of Edison’s experiments with sound transmission. His initial experiments used strips of waxed paper to capture sound vibrations, but his first recordings that could be played back were made on a rotating tinfoil cylinder with the embossing stylus making vertical vibrations. It is not a well known fact that Edison also conceived the idea of recording on to a tinfoil disc but did not pursue this option. After a flurry of initial publicity, Edison decided to put the phonograph aside since investors were eager for him to put his energy toward developing the incandescent light bulb. He saw this as an irresistible business opportunity, and he formed the Edison Electric Light Company. It wasn’t until January 1886 that he was able to resume work on the phonograph and thus, nearly a decade of potential sound documentation was lost to history. In the mid-1880s, Chichester Bell, a cousin of Alexander’s, and Charles Sumner Tainter began making improvements to the phonograph, which gave Edison added incentive to resume work on his invention. The tinfoil cylinder was replaced by one made of wax, which permitted the grooves to be cut into the surface. This improved cylinder could be played back numerous times and could be preserved for posterity. During the next several years, Edison dispatched agents to secure recordings of important celebrities in order to publicize his amazing invention. Thanks to them, we can hear recordings of such notable historic figures as Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Henry Irving, Florence Nightingale, P. T. Barnum, Arthur Sullivan, and even a few bars of Johannes Brahms at the piano. Recordings of pianist Hans von Bülow, conductor Theodore Thomas, and soprano Lilli Lehmann were also made but none of these has so far been found. This effort to gather important celebrity recordings was short-lived since Edison viewed the phonograph mainly as a dictation device to aid in business. There were, however, a few forward looking individuals who acquired phonographs from Edison and began making their own celebrity recordings. Notable among these were Henry Morton Stanley in England, Gottfried Ruben in Denmark, and Julius Block in Russia. It wasn’t until the late 1890s that Edison formed the National Phonograph Company and began issuing cylinders with musical content. Completely ignoring the possibility of recording great operatic singers and instrumentalists, Edison confined his repertoire to popular ditties and comic sketches. In those early days, there was no way to mass-produce cylinders except by recording the same selections over and over again. Additional copies could be rerecorded from one machine to another, but the process was extremely time consuming and yielded poor results.

Meanwhile, the 1890s saw the introduction of Emile Berliner’s gramophone, which recorded on to a flat disc with the cutting stylus making grooves with lateral vibrations. This system had several advantages over the cylinder, foremost of which was the ability to press multiple copies from a master disc. Berliner’s first discs were vastly inferior to phonograph cylinder recordings, but by 1900, such significant improvements in the recording and duplication process had been made that the gramophone began giving the phonograph serious competition. During the early years of the new century, the disc format increased in popularity and the major disc companies in Europe and America began recording many of the major operatic celebrities of the day. Not only could discs be mass-produced in whatever quantity was necessary, but the disc also had the advantage of a greater time duration. By 1903, the 12-inch disc had been introduced, which could hold four and a half minutes of music, compared with the two-minute limit of a typical cylinder. Edison solved the problem of cylinder duplication in 1902 with his “gold molded” cylinder and in 1905, he finally began producing two-minute operatic cylinders. Even though many of the big names had already signed contracts with disc companies, Edison managed to procure the services of some important singers such as Mary Garden, Florencio Constantino, Antonio Scotti, Mario Ancona, and Anton van Rooy. In an attempt to catch up to the disc companies, Edison introduced a four-minute cylinder in 1908 and within two years, he had added more name singers to his roster–Carmen Melis, Lucrezia Bori, Blanche Arral, Marie Delna, and Leo Slezak. These cylinders were the same size as the two-minute variety but with a greater number of grooves per inch thereby allowing for longer duration. Edison introduced a new line of phonographs that would play both two- and four-minute cylinders as well as an adapter for retrofitting existing two-minute machines. The new cylinder did not score an immediate success, however, since it proved to be extremely fragile and tended to wear quickly. The Edison Company continued to promote its new cylinders but it was becoming evident that the disc had gained ascendancy.

For some time, Walter Miller, director of Edison’s recording division, had been urging him to enter the disc market, but Edison had staunchly refused since he believed his cylinder to be the superior recording medium. While Edison was in Europe in 1909, Miller conducted some disc-recording experiments on his own, and when Edison returned, Miller finally convinced him to implement plans for a disc-recording project. Edison, now in his middle 60s and almost completely deaf, suddenly became keenly enthusiastic about developing his own brand of disc record. During the next five years, he invested an estimated two million dollars on research and development and began immersing himself in every aspect of the project. Edison’s discs were vertically cut and used the same size groove as the four-minute cylinder. This system gave Edison a potential advantage over his competitors since it allowed more time to be recorded per side, over four minutes on a ten-inch side and over seven minutes on a 12-inch side. Between 1910 and 1912, hundreds of discs were recorded, mostly ten-inch but some 12-inch sides as well. A seven-minute disc could have been a strong selling point for Edison over the competition, but oddly, Edison chose to issue only ten-inch discs. Thankfully however, some of the 12-inch masters were pressed for audition purposes and we are pleased to include some of these in this volume.

During these first years of disc-recording, Edison became increasingly interested in the musical content of his new recordings, despite the fact that he had little knowledge of music and no musical ability. In 1910, he purchased a set of the Grove Encyclopedia of Music and embarked upon a self-education program by reading up on all manner of musical subjects. He held strong and often eccentric opinions on music and especially on singing. He felt that only certain types of voices were appropriate for phonograph recording, with a particular distaste for what he called “tremolo.” He was extremely critical of many of the singers who made records for his company, and was reluctant to publish records which he personally disliked. An Edison representative was dispatched to Europe for the purpose of auditioning singers for the new label. Several hundred-test cylinders were recorded for Edison and his team to hear but despite the fact that many were excellent, none of these singers was chosen to record for the company. The best of these test cylinders can be heard on Marston’s The Edison Voice Trials (52025). Another example of Edison’s prodigious waste of talent and money is the acclaimed soprano, Aino Ackte. Edison published only one side out of the 30 recordings that she made for the company. It is a remarkable performance of the “Ave Maria” from Verdi’s Otello, beautifully sung and quite different from any other on record. Ironically, Edison’s dislike of so many of the voices he recorded may be the reason for the existence of the test pressings at the Edison archive. A case in point is Edith Walker’s recording of Brünnhilde’s Battle Cry from Die Walküre (CD 2 Track 15). After auditioning this recording, Edison disliked her voice so much that he considered the master to be expendable and used it to make an extra thick experimental pressing which he hoped would reduce acoustical resonances.

Edison was also often bothered by the sound of the orchestral accompaniment. He had the idea of using a harp combined with a few strings and perhaps a woodwind instrument such as a clarinet. Just imagine how difficult it must have been for the musical director to reduce operatic orchestral score to six or seven parts. Consequently, on some of the earliest recordings, the accompaniments are almost inaudible in places. It seems likely that his strange opinions may have resulted from his hearing deficiency and it would be fascinating to know exactly how much Edison could actually hear at this point in his life. As the years passed, he seems to have given up on the harp idea and permitted the musical decisions to be made by others more qualified.

Late in 1912, Edison introduced his first disc phonograph and the initial offering of his “diamond disc” records. These discs bore etched rather than paper labels and were composed of two celluloid discs laminated on both sides of a thick center core made of compressed wood shavings. Edison was convinced that a thick disc would help to deaden undesirable resonances. These first Edison discs played quite smoothly with little surface noise but within a year or so, customers complained that the edges of the discs were curling away from the core making them impossible to play. A new formula was developed, which proved to be more stable but the resultant discs were quite noisy compared to the first issue. During the 1920s, the etched label was replaced by paper and the pressing material was greatly improved. With the advent of electrical recording in 1925, Edison was unwilling to experiment with the new technology and stubbornly continued recording and issuing acoustic discs and cylinders. It wasn’t until late 1927 that Edison finally adopted electrical recording, and in October 1929, the record division of Thomas A. Edison Inc. went out of business.

Since 1956, Edison’s laboratory and home in West Orange, New Jersey have been designated a National Historic Site under the aegis of the United States National Park Service. There, much of the equipment that Edison himself used for research and experimentation still exists and every effort is being made to restore all of the buildings to their original state during Edison’s time. Housed at the Site are the Edison paper archive, comprising approximately five million documents. The most relevant of these are being microfilmed and gradually will be available through the Internet. The most important documents, together with commentary and analysis, are also being published in book form.

The Edison National Historic Site also contains a large collection of Edison’s cylinder and disc recordings as well as phonograph related artifacts. The Site has made it possible for us to issue important Edison recordings. Gerald Fabris, curator of the Edison museum and sound archive has taken great care to provide us with state of the art transfers using first-rate equipment. A great deal of experimentation has gone into the proper choice of styli to be used, which has made a tremendous difference in achieving optimum sonic reproduction. In the remastering process, I have taken care to reproduce each recording at score pitch except for two recordings by Lucrezia Bori, which were transposed down a semi-tone and duly noted in the table of contents. I have applied just enough digital processing to reduce the high level of surface noise found on many of these discs, but never so much as to interfere with vocal timbre and nuance. I have also made every effort to reduce the mid-range hum that is prominently audible on some of the earlier recordings.

Over the next few years, the Edison National Historic Site will continue to make digital transfers of their archived material. We are keenly enthusiastic about this project and as additional Edison material becomes available, we look forward to producing further offerings in our Edison Legacy series.

For further reading on this subject I recommend an article titled, “Edison and the Diamond Disc,” by Angus Joss, American Record Guide, vol. 14, no. 4, December 1947, pp 99 – 103 and vol. 14, no. 5, January 1948, pp 139 – 143.